TECHNIQUE OF AFFIRMATION

Preliminary Rules

1. Sit facing north or east. A straight armless chair over which a wool blanket has been placed is preferable. The cloth serves as an insulation against magnetic earth currents that tend to tie the mind to material perceptions.

2. Close your eyes and concentrate on the medulla oblongata (at the back of the neck), unless otherwise directed. Keep spine erect, chest high, abdomen in. Take a deep breath and exhale it, three times.

3. Relax the body and keep it motionless. Empty the mind of all restless thoughts, and withdraw its attention from bodily sensations, heat and cold, sounds, and so on.

4. Do not think of the particular kind of healing you need.

5. Cast away anxiety, distrust, and worry. Realize calmly and trustingly that the Divine Law works and is all-powerful. Permit yourself no doubt or disbelief. Faith and concentration allow the law to operate unhampered. Hold the thought that all bodily states are changeable and curable and that the idea of a chronic disease is a delusion.

Time

One should use affirmations immediately after awakening in the morning or during the period of somnolence preceding sleep at night. Groups may meet at any suitable hour.

Place

Quiet surroundings as far as possible. If the meeting has to be held in a noisy place, ignore the sounds and attend devotedly to your practice.

Method

Before starting to affirm, always free the mind from worries and restlessness. Choose your affirmation and repeat all of it, first loudly, then softly and more slowly, until your voice becomes a whisper. Then gradually affirm it mentally only, without moving the tongue or the lips, until you feel that you have attained deep, unbroken concentration—not unconsciousness, but a profound continuity of uninterrupted thought.

If you continue with your mental affirmation, and go still deeper, you will feel a sense of increasing joy and peace. During the state of deep concentration, your affirmation will merge with the subconscious stream, to come back later reinforced with power to influence your conscious mind through the law of habit.

During the time that you experience ever increasing peace, your affirmation goes deeper, into the superconscious realm, to return later laden with unlimited power to influence your conscious mind and also to fulfill your desires. Doubt not and you shall witness the miracle of this scientific faith. ...

These Affirmations Soul-Inspired

Many processes are involved between the sowing of the affirmation seed and its fruition. All conditions of its growth must be fulfilled to produce the desired result. The affirmation seed must be a living one, free from the defects of doubt, restlessness, or inattention; it should be sown in the mind and heart with concentration, devotion, and peace, and watered with deep, fresh repetition and boundless faith. ...

Always Avoid Mechanical Repetition

Repeat affirmations firmly and with intensity and sincerity until such power is gained that one command, one strong urge from within, will be sufficient to change your body cells and to move your soul to performance of miracles.

The Progressive Stages of Chanting

Remember again that the affirmations should be uttered with the proper loud intonation, fading into a whisper, and above all with attention and devotion. Thus the thoughts are led, by one's conviction of the efficacy and truth of the affirmations, from the auditory sense to the understanding of the conscious mind, then to the subconscious or automatic mind, and then to the superconscious mind. Those persons who believe will be cured by these affirmations. The five stages of chanting are: conscious loud chanting, whisper chanting, mental chanting, subconscious chanting, and superconscious chanting. ...

Aum or Amen, the Cosmic Sound

When you are passing from one stage of chanting to another, the attitude of the mind also should change and become deeper and more concentrated. The aim is to unite chanter, chant, and the process of chanting into one. The mind should enter the deepest conscious state—not unconsciousness or absentmindedness or sleep, but a state of such focused concentration that all thoughts are sunk into and merged with the one central thought, like particles drawn to an irresistible magnet.

Three Physiological Centers

During will affirmations, your attention should be centered in the spot between the eyebrows; during thought affirmations, in the medulla oblongata;* and during devotional affirmations, in the heart. At appropriate times man automatically fixes his mind on one of these physiological regions; for example, during states of emotion he feels the heart center to the exclusion of all other parts of the body. By the practise of affirmations one acquires the power of consciously directing his attention to the vital sources of will, thought, and feeling.

Absolute, unquestioning faith in God is the greatest method of instantaneous healing. An unceasing effort to arouse that faith is man's highest and most rewarding duty.

* The medulla and the spot between the eyebrows are in fact the positive and negative poles, respectively, of one center of intelligent life force. Paramahansaji sometimes instructed devotees to concentrate at the spot between the eyebrows, and sometimes at the medulla, but the two are one by polarity. When the gaze of the eyes is centralized with calm concentration at the point between the eyebrows, the current from the two eyes goes first to that point in the forehead, and thence to the medulla. The single astral eye of light then appears in the forehead, reflected there from the medulla.